One of the nation’s highest-paid public school superintendents is being sued by one of his board members for repeatedly violating a public records request relating to the costly renovation of his lavish office and his highly-paid friends on the school district’s payroll.

With a yearly compensation package of $550,000, Miami Dade School Superintendent Rudy Crew is among the country’s best paid school chiefs and evidently he feels this power shields him from the state’s renowned open records law known as the Sunshine Law.

It turns out that Crew, who failed to improve New York City schools in four years as chancellor, has repeatedly and unlawfully ignored various public records requests in the last few years. Among them is the demand for an itemized list of the costs associated with the taxpayer-financed renovation of board member offices as well as a list of district employees whose salaries exceeded six figures.

In a March 2005 memo to the school board member requesting the public information, Crew said that he did not believe that the effort required of his staff to gather and organize the information was an effective use their time. So, he has completely disregarded the request and now the district of 350,000 students will waste more money defending the legal action.